Countries staying committed to climate change

7/2/2025 6:19

Countries are

staying committed to their national climate plans and looking to

lead the clean energy transition, as the United States plans to

exit the Paris climate agreement, the UN's top climate official

said in his first speech of the year on Thursday.

Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention

on Climate Change, laid out priorities ahead of annual climate

talks in November, and encouraged countries to prepare stronger

national climate plans this year, even after U.S. President

Donald Trump said he will remove the world's second-biggest

greenhouse gas emitter from the Paris agreement.



"A country may step back, but others are already stepping

into their place to seize the opportunity, and to reap the

massive rewards: stronger economic growth, more jobs, less

pollution and far lower health costs, more secure and affordable

energy," Stiell said in a speech in Brazil's capital Brasilia,

alongside COP30 President Ambassador André Corrêa do Lago.



Asked about which countries are stepping up, Stiell says

they will know at the end of the year, as the countries deliver

a new round of NDCs.



"The call is for greater ambition, for these plans to be

economy wide. These will be the most comprehensive climate plans

ever developed, the third generation of NDCs. We'll be able to

give better commentary as we synthesize that toward the end of

the year", said the UN climate chief.



"But in terms of actions being taken, just looking at what

is happening within the markets, region by region, country by

country, it's very clear, as I said, those that are pushing

forward, regardless of whatever rhetoric there is about those

who wish to step back", he argued, citing, for example, what

China, Brazil and India are doing on reducing emissions.



Stiell said in the 10 years since the Paris Agreement was

adopted, the world has become more divided but the climate

negotiation process has "managed to buck the trend."



Some governments have faced political backlash to climate

policies. Green candidates in Europe are losing support and the

U.S. elected Trump, who campaigned against the Biden

administration's climate-centered agenda.



Even so, Stiell said the world has mobilized around $2

trillion in climate finance, money to support poorer countries'

efforts to reduce emissions and adapt to climate impacts, from

"nearly nothing" over the last decade. He called on countries to

increase the amount of climate finance they agreed to target at

last year's climate summit of $300 billion annually by 2035.



Stiell said the Paris Agreement provides all the mechanisms

to drive countries to reduce emissions, but recognizes it "lacks

enforceability".



"And at the end of the day, it is for countries to

nationally enforce and manage. And what we're seeing there is

that gap between what needs to be done and what is being done",

he said.



Stiell said also that he expects the vast majority of

countries to submit new national climate plans under the Paris

agreement this year. The UNFCCC has a February 10 deadline for

submissions of those plans but many countries said they would

submit them later in the year.